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Church & State

Judge Moore’s Mobile Monument Lands In Alabama

Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s Ten Commandments monument, for years at the center of a contentious legal battle, has found a permanent home outside the church he attends in Gadsden.

Moore had the 2.5-ton granite religious symbol installed in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building in Montgomery shortly after he became chief justice in 2000.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State and allied groups won a lawsuit in federal district court seeking the display’s removal on First Amendment grounds. Moore appealed and lost at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court refused to review the case.

Once it became clear that Moore would not follow the federal order to remove the monument, he was ousted from the state Supreme Court and the display was removed.

For the past year, American Veterans in Domestic Defense, a right-wing group that dislikes the media and the entire federal government, toured the monument around the country.

On April 29, the monument was installed outside CrossPoint Community Church. At the installation ceremony, Moore said he looked “forward to that day when the acknowledgement of God and His sovereign laws will be returned to every school in the state and in this nation. And that together, once again, we shall stand and say and proclaim with a loud voice, ‘Yes, there is still a God in America.’”

The Montgomery Advertiser in an editorial bemoaned Moore’s actions and said the monument had finally found a “fitting place.”

“Moore’s church in Gadsden is a fine place for the monument,” the paper opined. “How regrettable for Alabama that he didn’t offer it for placement there to begin with.”